D&D 5E D&DN going down the wrong path for everyone.

[Campbell]

As a 4e fan I have a confession to make - I don't like solo monsters. Fights against varied groups of antagonists just feel more tense and dynamic. Of course I've never really found an RPG where 5 vs. 1 is very exciting.

 

[Celebrim]

As a 4e fan I have a confession to make - I don't like solo monsters. Fights against varied groups of antagonists just feel more tense and dynamic. Of course I've never really found an RPG where 5 vs. 1 is very exciting.

Encounter design on a single monster is a lot harder than it is with a small team of foils. My biggest success with 'solo' monsters generally comes with monsters that employ skirmisher tactics retreating often in an attempt to continiously control the ground and pacing of the fight, breaking what would be a single quick slog fest into a series of running battles broken up by chases of some sort. I also have had reasonably good success with 'summoner'/'mastermind' type solo monsters, that basically screen themselves with minions - but its arguable whether that is truly 5 vs. 1.

But yeah, in general I try to make the PC's face off against a small tactical team of some sort when I can. Certain overall scenarios make that tougher or harder to pull off though. It works great if you are doing something like 'against the demihumans' or 'assault on the cultists'. If you are running a murder mystery type scenario or a gothic horror type scenario, often the story framework encourages having a single central foe that you shine some spotlight on and try to heighten the conflict between your protagonists (the PCs) and 'the villain'. That means IME having a villain who is very very good at getting away. If you let your PC's go nova and then try to stand toe to toe with them, most NPC's will go down like chumps.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

As a 4e fan I have a confession to make - I don't like solo monsters. Fights against varied groups of antagonists just feel more tense and dynamic. Of course I've never really found an RPG where 5 vs. 1 is very exciting.

That's fine. I'd say though if you want to experiment then create a scenario in your game where the PCs can face a 'boss' monster, and take one of the MM3 solos, reskin it if needed, and go for it. I recommend the Young White Dragon as a very good solid choice that is fairly easy to use. Toss in a few minions and some interesting terrain, see what happens. I reskinned that monster into a giant werecreature and it was totally awesome, the party fought it in a sawmill with falling logs, swinging derricks, a saw with an innocent maiden about to get cut in half, the whole nine yards. It kicked ass. That monster worked flawlessly. Every time the party thought maybe they had him on the rocks, he'd blast out a howl (breath weapon) or use his off-turn charge/condition remover and all of a sudden it was GAME ON! again. Most fun fight I've had in a good while I think.

I'm sure that isn't going to be the case always of course, and you may just not like solos. That's cool, elites make pretty good boss monsters too usually, and I definitely only unleash solos now and then (obliviax moss was a good one too).

 

[D'karr]

As a 4e fan I have a confession to make - I don't like solo monsters. Fights against varied groups of antagonists just feel more tense and dynamic. Of course I've never really found an RPG where 5 vs. 1 is very exciting.

I was having the same problem until I started tweaking them. I don't use solos often, but when I do there is a lot going on to make the fight exciting. The final battle against Strahd in the crypts of Castle Ravenloft comes to mind.

 

[Celebrim]

Toss in a few minions and some interesting terrain, see what happens...it was totally awesome, the party fought it in a sawmill with falling logs, swinging derricks, a saw with an innocent maiden about to get cut in half, the whole nine yards...Most fun fight I've had in a good while I think.

There is no mechanical substitute for good encounter design. Mechanical tools may help inspire you to better encounter design, and a solid mechanical foundation may make encounter design speedier, but ultimately each encounter is a little mini-game and designing them is as much art as science.

One of the reason that prep is so important is precisely because certain aspects of design are so hard that you probably won't just luck into them by improvisation. Setting and planned diversity are essential. Since a lot of this talk seems 4e centric, one thing you might try is adding encounter powers to a monster that depend on its setting, explicitly letting the monster use the terrain to its advantage and formalizing the sort of 'stunts' you are going to let the monster take. For the fight in the Sawmill, these might include things like, "Drop through the Floor", "Lower the Boom", "Bring down the House" and so forth. This avoids the problem NJC had where after you blow your monsters encounter power, its not obvious what there is that is interesting to do next.

Of course, you don't need 4e to have this mind set, you just need some sort of way of resolving the action. Those little packets of narrative power can be created independently of a 4e style stat block, for any edition, using basically the same techniques you use to make the power entry in a 4e stat block.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

There is no mechanical substitute for good encounter design. Mechanical tools may help inspire you to better encounter design, and a solid mechanical foundation may make encounter design speedier, but ultimately each encounter is a little mini-game and designing them is as much art as science.

One of the reason that prep is so important is precisely because certain aspects of design are so hard that you probably won't just luck into them by improvisation. Setting and planned diversity are essential. Since a lot of this talk seems 4e centric, one thing you might try is adding encounter powers to a monster that depend on its setting, explicitly letting the monster use the terrain to its advantage and formalizing the sort of 'stunts' you are going to let the monster take. For the fight in the Sawmill, these might include things like, "Drop through the Floor", "Lower the Boom", "Bring down the House" and so forth. This avoids the problem NJC had where after you blow your monsters encounter power, its not obvious what there is that is interesting to do next.

Of course, you don't need 4e to have this mind set, you just need some sort of way of resolving the action. Those little packets of narrative power can be created independently of a 4e style stat block, for any addition, using basically the same techniques you use to make the power entry in a 4e stat block.

Very true. I think that was one of the goals of adding terrain powers in DMG2 (though those are useful to either side, which creates a different set of dynamics).

I totally agree, you can do all this stuff in say 3e or 2e, or most any game, but 4e really taught me a lot about good encounter design. I don't know if it is just that I'm thick and it took a system that really made it obvious to get it to sink in or whatever. If I were to go back to running 2e I'd definitely have more interesting encounters now than I did back in the 90's. I do improvise a lot, but I agree that its hard to improvise a really excellent full up 'boss' encounter like that. You wouldn't think of all those elements without spending a bit of time at it (I probably put in an hour on that one, maybe even a bit more even though I just refluffed existing monsters).

Anyway, I hope DDN has some really good encounter building tools. Mike talks a lot about ADVENTURE building, but not so much about the encounters. I think there's got to be both in there. Maybe 4e talked a bit much about one, but they should watch swinging too far the other way.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Hmmmm, as opposed to what? Your 1e red dragon, rounds 1-3 breath, round 4+ claw/claw/bite. Clearly in neither case is it the rolling of dice and delivering of hits that is the fun part. A 4e dragon that just sits there and dukes it out is no more or less boring than a 1e dragon that does the same thing. I guess the moral of the story might be that the system can't make things exciting.

I thought it was random when 1E dragon could breathe again? And, the evil dragons did have a small chance of spell use.

But, the main difference is that a combat vs a dragon in 4E vs one in 1E or 2E is that the combat in 4E would last a lot longer at the table (leaving 3E out, as I found that to take longer than all of them)

 

[JustinAlexander]

you can't trade down in Vancian (take a level 1 instead of a level 2 spell)

Wrong.

 

[Nagol]

Wrong.

Well wrong in 3.X. Correct previously.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I thought it was random when 1E dragon could breathe again? And, the evil dragons did have a small chance of spell use.

But, the main difference is that a combat vs a dragon in 4E vs one in 1E or 2E is that the combat in 4E would last a lot longer at the table (leaving 3E out, as I found that to take longer than all of them)

I don't recall my good boss fights being SUPER long. I mean fighting a dragon in 1e is a LONG drawn-out affair because you have be oh so careful to get things just right.

And no, a 1e dragon gets 3 breaths/day. So you KNOW that on rounds 1, 2, and 3 there is going to be big hurt in a large zone. If it IS fast it is only because "Finger of Death" worked or something else silly and tragic. The 4e fight won't be the fastest ever, but it should be FUN. Only do something this big if you really are wanting to have a show, that's what solos are for. Celebrim mentioned some good ways to make it kickin' 4e